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Greenberg: Science May Not Support Boulder Brands' Gluten Claims

I totally missed this story when it first came out in May, but it's just as relevant today -- even more so with the surge in shares of Boulder Brands BDBD, a gluten-free play: The doctor behind the gluten-free craze says he was wrong.Dr. Peter Gibson's reversal has been widely reported in a variety of publications, including Real Clear Science, the New Yorker and even on Good Morning America.But you wouldn't know it by the stock-goosing comments of Boulder Brands' CEO Stephen Hughes, at a William Blair conference earlier this week. Boulder owns a number of leading gluten-free brands, including Udi's and Glutino.In his presentation, speaking of gluten, he said:"So the reality is, this is one of those ingredients that we screwed around with. We hybridized wheat to make it more glutinous, so you could make bread faster, cheaper, better. Gluten is glue in Latin, and what we created was something that did make better bread, did make cheaper bread, but it's very hard to digest and it creates a lot of unintended consequences."

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I totally missed this story when it first came out in May, but it's just as relevant today -- even more so with the surge in shares of Boulder Brands (BDBD), a gluten-free play: The doctor behind the gluten-free craze says he was wrong.

But you wouldn't know it by the stock-goosing comments of Boulder Brands' CEO Stephen Hughes, at a William Blair conference earlier this week. Boulder, which is red-flagged on Reality Check, owns a number of leading gluten-free brands, including Udi's and Glutino.

In his presentation, speaking of gluten, he said:

So the reality is, this is one of those ingredients that we screwed around with. We hybridized wheat to make it more glutinous, so you could make bread faster, cheaper, better. Gluten is glue in Latin, and what we created was something that did make better bread, did make cheaper bread, but it's very hard to digest and it creates a lot of unintended consequences. We have 1.8 million friends of Udi's that we communicate with on a weekly basis, that are very engaged, and it's amazing their stories, it's well beyond celiac. I mean people, whether it's a rash -- a child has a rash or they have some stomach issues, they really feel. And again, some of this is very real, some of this could be perceived, but they really believe eliminating gluten from their diet or limiting gluten from their diet is a very big positive.